


do you love me (or is it just a dream)

by orphan_account



Series: merlin and arthur according to camelot [2]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Everyone Hates Gwaine, M/M, Merlin wants Arthur to suffer evidently, proposal fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:20:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24880708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Lancelot’s eyes are warm and his voice cool. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” he says amicably, in a way that implies that he isn’t apologetic about the situation at all. “But I believe Merlin has killed Sir Gwaine.”“Well,” Arthur drinks, a mix of despair and the feeble hope that he may successfully become an alcoholic in the next few seconds. “At least something good has come out of this miserable affair.”
Relationships: Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Series: merlin and arthur according to camelot [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1800340
Comments: 16
Kudos: 208





	do you love me (or is it just a dream)

It is a well-kept secret, so immaculately hidden that only one individual actually has access to the information, that Arthur, Camelot’s beloved King, is in fact a connoisseur of the arts. Of course, he cannot announce his talents to the kingdom with flourish; any artist knows that pain is best muse and Arthur has always been a vibrant, but tortured soul. 

“Stop being so dramatic,” Morgana interrupts his monologue without pausing to consider how this might affect him, the artist. Arthur sticks his tongue out at the woman, who is lazily sitting in what he assumes is his chambers, though Morgana has always been one to stake claim to what is not his, and honestly, would it kill her to pick at her own breakfast that Arthur knows she has enjoyed only hours earlier?

Ahem. He glares at Morgana, though she has already, quite rudely Arthur thinks, reminded him that there are several other things that she might be attending to at this present moment. Arthur is not inclined to make his sister’s life any easier, so he parades on, pacing ostentatiously so that his verbal inflection coincides with the rays of sunlight that have infiltrated his room. Morgana examines the berries in front of her as he speaks, perhaps wondering if they may be used to plug her ears; Arthur thinks her efforts will prove unfruitful. 

Artist is another word for perfectionist, and indeed that is what Arthur is. He is a perfectionist in every sense of the word: a just ruler that agrees there is no such thing as a reckoning without examining any and all context, a friend who remembers the most trivial of passionate inclinations, and a mentor, taking care to raise each squire as if they have inherited his bright blue eyes and the Pendragon name.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Morgana has a certain accentuation to her voice that prickles Arthur’s skin, he imagines this is what the sunflowers in the garden must feel when the lovely, Camelot red roses caress them with the burden of their sharp thorns. “Just last week you forgot young Favian’s name.”

“You mean Walter,” Arthur corrects.

“No, I mean Favian!” Morgana says sharply, and Arthur knows she will insist upon Favian’s identity until she has finally degraded in whatever bastardly grave he sends her to- Arthur is not fooled, Walter is like a brother to him.

At any rate, perfection takes time and consideration that Arthur has not been acquainted with since he became king (“bullshit”) and he tells Morgana that this is the reason he hasn’t proposed to Merlin yet.

“No one’s asking you to propose yet, brother,” she points out. “It’s simply that everyone and their mother is asking you to use your words and talk to him.” And Arthur supposes that Morgana will bring up a conjecture on the common courtesies of falling in love with your best friend, but he quite doesn’t want to hear it.

“Right.” He pauses and Morgana stands, brushing off crumbs (his hard earned crumbs, mind you) from her threateningly dark gown; she is probably thinking that her superior intellect has caused him to, for the first time, consolidate his thoughts before he says them out loud. Unfortunately, she is awfully mistaken. “How do I do that exactly?”

Morgana’s eyes flash with precedented golden annoyance and without warning, though the amount of times she’s assaulted him from her position of power should be warning enough, sidenote: Arthur regrets lifting the ban on magic everytime he sees his sister meander through the castle halls, two gleaming tendrils of light smack him upside the head. Arthur wants to tell her that light isn’t supposed to feel like anything, a reminder that he did have startlingly high marks in the nature of physics, but he doesn’t particularly want to get hit again.

Taking several moments more than she needs, Morgana settles back down in her seat and commands him the way Leon might when Arthur inevitably becomes more preoccupied with ridiculing Merlin than the sword in his sparring partner’s hand: hopelessly dull and unpropitious. “I am going to speak,” she says too calmly. “And you are going to listen, for if you interrupt me I will make sure that braying like a donkey will become a _fond_ memory in comparison to the wrath I invoke.”

Arthur stops and slowly sits on his folded sheets, wide-eyed and wincing when the bed post emits a creaking sound. He opens his mouth to assent to whatever situation has befallen him before opting to rapidly nod his head up and down instead.

Morgana just stares at him with those glittering eyes and smirks.

Lancelot and Elyan had always known what they were getting into when they associated themselves with Gwaine; a term that they were reluctant to use as it caused noble men to pity them and beautiful women to curl their lips up in disgust. But Gwaine reminded them, at least Lancelot, who had always been gentler with his critiquing observations, of a headache: throbbing, then a dull pain that he couldn’t rid himself of.

Their most sizable vexation came from their close proximity to the tavern, a place that Gwaine would live the rest of his shameful, stubborn life in if both Gwaine and Arthur had their way. At any rate, it was either Lancelot or Elyan, or if the barmaid’s son was feeling particularly fearful for his life, both, that were awoken long after the stars had bid the moon goodnight. And it was either Lancelot or Elyan that would have to convince Gwaine of how saddened Merlin would be if he managed to drown himself in mead (though, if Merlin were the one dragging Gwaine back to his chambers at hours as unfitting as these, he thinks that Merlin would simply conjure up whatever liquid befitted him at the moment and drown Gwaine himself).

For the third night that week, Lancelot awakes to a nervous tapping on his door, like a slight bird coming to greet him, except the bird had no propriety when it came to time and was currently outside his chambers. He thuds his head against the wooden headboard of his bed; for once, instead of _Lancelot the Brave_ , he would like to be known as _Lancelot the Annoyed When People Woke him up at Midnight_.

It is young Thomas, who, on second thought, also shouldn’t be awake in these witching hours, who awaits him with an apprehensive crease between his eyebrows. Lancelot simply raises his hand, “let me get Sir Elyan and we will be at the Tavern shortly,” he says, because if he must suffer then Elyan shall as well.

Thomas gives him a beaming smile-it is clear Lancelot isn’t the only one with a drunkard friend that poor Thomas has had to summon tonight- and without further thought rushes off to his next victim. 

Elyan is bleary-eyed when he stumbles through the door and Lancelot nearly recoils at the thought of wandering through the castle with a drunkard and a narcoleptic, but Lancelot figures that Elyan would grant him no mercy if he sent him back to whatever fitful sleep he could manage in the oppressive summer heat.

They walk quietly to the Tavern, the silence only punctuated by Elyan’s frighteningly reverberating yawns and a cat that Lancelot stops to pet. For the little black creature that was content on purring and rubbing its soft pelt on Lancelot’s thinly clothed sleep-wear, Gwaine could wait.

They hear the imbecile before they see him and it’s a wonder that Camelot hasn’t waged war on Sir Gwaine yet. “Mary, Mary, just give a lad a chance, eh?”

Lancelot and Elyan share a glance and peer in only to see Mary with a rag in her hand and a distasteful curl on her lips. “Sir Gwaine,” she approaches him the way a Kilgharrah might view Arthur, a test of wits to see if males were as stupid as they seemed to be. “I sincerely hope you have the coin to pay your tab tonight.”

Mary’s eyes sparkle with relief when they enter to retrieve Gwaine from whatever emotional stupor he has found himself in; unfortunately, Mary seems to be the only resident of the Tavern that has noticed as most of Camelot’s citizens were seemingly enthralled by the crass tune Gwaine had broken into.

For her part, their lovely barkeeper ignored the chaos in a way that only the most practiced can, turning to them and requesting in simple terms that they pay Gwaine’s tab and promptly remove him from the premises. The pair of knights, extremely horrified at the rhyme their friend has just created (really, he was going to do _what_? with _who_?), were only too happy to oblige.

“Put it on the King’s tab!” Elyan calls out. He has one arm wrapped around Gwaine’s waist and one hand clutching the cross around his neck-most likely begging for the repentance of every action that lead them to this moment. If Lancelot believed in a god, he would beseech the same.

God however, has different plans for Elyan, and in turn, for Lancelot and Gwaine. They are turning the last corner, and Lancelot thinks that sleep is so often taken for granted, and maybe he could grovel until Arthur hired someone whose sole purpose was to drag their bastard friend back to his own chambers, when they run into none other but the Court Sorcerer, who is covered in mud and twigs and looks rather like, he has once again saved the world without their knowledge. 

“Hello,” Merlin says warily. He is clearly exhausted, most likely, tonight’s adventure had to do with evil magic-users and a bounty on Arthur’s head. There is a familiar look in his eyes, a shattered emotion Lancelot saw in young knights who had their innocent naivety torn away from them at too small an age, and he knows that dear Merlin had to take someone’s life tonight.

But the set of Merlin’s limbs and his tightly clenched fists tell him that an interrogation is not in order. Luckily, Gwaine saves them from whatever fate was about to befall them with a cheerful yelp and a haphazard slump in the warlock’s direction.

“Merlin!” and realization settles in the aforementioned’s eyes. How he didn’t see Gwaine’s drunken stupor earlier is beyond Lancelot-but Merlin seems happy enough carrying the knight's useless weight so he doesn’t interject. “Hiiii…”

“Are you kidding me, Gwaine? It’s nearly dawn!” but there is amusement in his eyes. “Arthur will have your head if you sleep through training tomorrow.” 

Gwaine looks at him somewhere in between his eyebrows and hairline, and says with a comically serious petulance, the way a child might when they are told that they can’t become a squire until they are fifteen summers, “I hate Arthur.” 

“Gwaine, that’s treason,” Elyan says lightly. This is the precise moment everything goes wrong. 

“Arthur called me up to his room yesterday, you know?” and there is a ball of fire headed straight for them with no foreseeable exit except for the panic tossed between Lancelot and Elyan; Lancelot’s mouth has already turned to sand and with Gwaine’s next words, he has forgotten how to form any words at all. “For the proposal.”

Merlin cocks his head, the damage seeping through to his brain like a downpour in the frigid months of winter. “The what?”

“N-nothing!” Elyan manages to stutter out; but if his hesistence is by any means believable then Lancelot swears to turn in his Camelot red cape right then and there. “He’s obviously drunk, Merlin. We should get him to beat.” His nervous laugh is reminiscent of a goat headed to the slaughter. “Can’t have Arthur angry at training, yeah?”

Despite what Gwaine may think, Lancelot is Merlin’s closest friend, and when Merlin trains his expression on him (Merlin, who, other than Gwen, is Lancelot’s most favorite person in the world) he can feel his willpower fracture and disintegrate. “Lancelot,” he says, eerily inscrutable. “What proposal?”

“I…” he trails off, wondering whose trust he is going to betray tonight. “Merls, you’re going to have to ask Arthur. I’m sorry.” And with a growing sense of dread, coupled with an overwhelming desire to pull Gwaine off the nearest terrace, they leave poor Merlin to contemplate everything he had once known.

Merlin’s worst trait is when he bursts into Arthur’s room at first light without knocking. He isn’t a servant anymore, but he is the second person Arthur speaks to each day (if anyone could consider his morning interactions with George speaking). He appears and Arthur’s heart jolts at the sight of him-cheerful and noisy and everything he’s ever wanted. 

Today is different and Arthur feels poison cool his vein and fear coat his lungs; his proposal was imminent and Merlin was ignoring him. He couldn’t help but think that not even Morgana in her cruelest moments could devise a plan so capable of tearing Arthur Pendragon into multiple shreds of flammable parchment.

“Merlin,” he snipes when it has been several minutes after the council meeting and the two of them are the last ones in their seats. The sunlight streaming in from the high windows warms him briefly, before a cloud crosses its path and Arthur realizes that the sky is in on whatever masterful damnation the world is subjecting him to. _“You’ve been awfully quiet, are you okay?_ ” 

What he actually says is: “What’s wrong with you?”

“You know what?” Merlin’s eyes are reflective, a portrait of blue stained glass hanging in the most sacred of spaces; Arthur has never seen a worse image. “I thought we were friends, or even…” he trails off but Arthur sees the unspoken _more_ with the flourish of a painter’s quill.

“Aren’t we?” fear begins to taste much like crimson blood in Arthur’s mouth. Regardless of whether or not he was planning to propose in the upcoming days, questions like the ones Merlin’s asking are unlit matches with a desire to burn.

“So who are you proposing to then?”

 _Shit_. “Who said I was proposing to anyone?”

“Well,” Merlin crosses his arms and bears the expression of annoyance that he is allowed to now that he has become Court Sorcerer. “As a matter of fact, Gwaine did.”

Arthur can’t help but splutter at that, feeling only slightly like Gwaine has shot him with his own crossbow. His voice turns into an unwelcome shout, the kind where one doesn’t have control over the volume of their own voice until they are already speaking. “Gwaine!”

They are not as alone as Arthur thought; knights must have been loitering the hallway to catch a snippet of how Arthur had disappointed Merlin this time, so infuriatingly, at his name, Gwaine (and Lancelot and Elyan who look rather pale for such a warm day) pokes his head through the door. “You er, yelled?”

Lancelot whispers something in his ear that makes the long-haired knight turn an odd shade, similar to the eggs Arthur had for breakfast. When Gwaine has been caught doing something he shouldn’t, which happens much too often for any of their liking, he tends to ramble; he doesn’t let them down now. “Actually, I must have been hearing things. My king would never yell, no he has such a nice voice to listen to and he’s so fair and just-which is what I tell everyone on the Mercia border and-”

“Get. Out.” Arthur all but snarls, disproving Gwaine’s point entirely. Merlin, throughout the whole ordeal, looks thoroughly unamused, and Arthur’s heart sinks further down, greeting the tips of his stomach. 

The knights obey his demanding request silently, looking like they have just been told to go to the stocks for 3-months. Unfortunately, that sentence would only cause Merlin to grow further distasteful of yours truly, otherwise, he would do it.

Arthur has no choice now. None. Morgana’s voice is stuck in his head, saying things like _hurry up, Arthur_ and _I wish I could fling you off the balcony_ ; he doesn’t know how the two are related. He doesn’t, actually, think that they are.

The ring is upstairs, so Arthur grabs a spoon of the dining table and sinks to one knee. He knows, from Merlin’s wide eyes and puzzled frown that he must look ridiculous, or at the very least, like he’s pulling a very horrible prank. But Arthur has never had any restraint when it came to Merlin, so he can’t bring himself to stop now.

“Merlin,” the words tumble out so unlike anything he’d practiced, and yet, they feel warm and they feel just. “Only you would manage to ruin your own proposal.”

“It wasn’t my fault!” he protests, but his hand is covering his mouth and Arthur knows he’s smiling.

“I haven’t even courted you properly yet,” Arthur continues. “Quite frankly, you’ve spoiled this entire thing. But for some reason unbeknownst to me, I’ve fallen in love with it. With your clumsiness, your spite, your intelligence, your..”

“Inability to keep quiet,” Merlin supplies helpfully.

“That,” he agrees. “And I’ve fallen in love with you, Merlin. In a way that would make my father roll in his grave. You’ve made me kinder and better and well, no one else is going to fall in love with you, so I’ve taken it upon myself-”

“You’re a prat.”

“To propose to you,” he finishes and his throat is suddenly dry because here comes doubt that he has never known before. Doubt that is unable to be taken away by Merlin because it is because of him. “Merlin, you clotpole, will you marry me?”

There are several beats of terrible silence, but his dearest friend clears his throat and says, “well since you ask so nicely…”

“For Christ’s sake-”

“Yes,” he gives Arthur that lopsided smile that makes his heart ache and Arthur is positive that he could battle 1,000 men because of that one word. “Of course I’ll marry you.”

It is a few days later that everything begins to sink in; after Arthur had kissed Merlin for the first time and fallen in love all over again. Lancelot knocks on his door with and expression of pure mirth and all Arthur wants to do is go live on that farm he once told Gwen about.

His eyes are warm and his voice is cool. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” he says amicably, in a way that implies that he isn’t apologetic about the situation at all. “But I believe that your husband has killed Sir Gwaine.”

“Well,” Arthur drinks, a mix of despair (what will he ever do with Gwaine?) and the feeble hope that he may successfully become an alcoholic in the next few seconds. “At least something good has come out of this whole affair.”

But he sees Merlin out of their bedroom window. He is in the courtyard, crouching down to listen to a small girl lecture him about the doll in her hand. As Merlin moves, his ring finger twinkles in the sunlight and Arthur smiles in spite of everything. 

Something good, indeed.

**Author's Note:**

> woooo propsal fic! done, finally because i couldn't think of any good ideas, so this oneshot isn't my best work. anyway, i want this series to be arthur and merlin in camelot (the series name) but i want to do another one with merlin AUs and stuff, lmk what you think.
> 
> thanks for reading!!


End file.
